RFK Jr.'s misguided science shapes a dangerous policy

By Deborah Fuller / For The Conversation

At Thursday’s hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. faced heated questions from numerous senators about his vaccine policies, including his stance on covid-19 vaccines and mRNA vaccine technology.

Although Kennedy agreed that Operation Warp Speed, President Donald Trump’s signature initiative to produce covid-19 vaccines in nine months, was a tremendous achievement, he also maintained that covid-19 vaccines cause widespread and serious harm, including death, particularly in young people; a claim for which there is no evidence.

Some especially pointed questions came from Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician who provided the final vote needed for Kennedy’s confirmation this February after Kennedy promised him he would not change the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s process for recommending vaccines. Cassidy pointed out that with the limitations and confusion caused by the CDC’s new rules around covid-19 vaccines, “I would say effectively we are denying people vaccines.” To which Kennedy replied, “Well, you’re wrong.”

At the hearing, Kennedy stood by his decision to cut $500 million in HHS funding for 22 research contracts on mRNA vaccine technology. HHS has said it will instead pour these funds into research on a traditional approach to designing vaccines that was first used more than 200 years ago. With such vaccines, called whole-virus vaccines, a person’s immune system is presented with the whole virus, often in weakened or inactivated form. This switcheroo has puzzled many scientists.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-rfk-jr-s-misguided-science-shapes-a-dangerous-policy/